Simplify your home like a yacht stewardess

With another new year fast approaching, most of us have hopes and dreams of becoming healthier and happier in 2018. It seems like every year we start off strong; join a gym, eat more salads, throw out some junk. But no matter how determined we are, our busy lives pile up a pile of mail and papers on the counter, and our visits to the gym become shorter and less frequent. Sometimes being surrounded by “stuff” and not feeling organized can be demotivating and suck up our precious time.

That’s why this year, maybe we should focus on decluttering and organizing the space where we spend most of our time. Having a clean, litter-free space can be motivating in and of itself. I’m not necessarily talking about minimalism, so don’t go away just yet. I’m talking about creating a home that is an escape rather than a long to-do list. This year, why not try organizing your home like the dreamy queens of organization and living spaces, the yacht hostesses?

Imagine if your house often moved and rolled like a boat. Imagine the mess; broken dishes, piles of papers on the floor, overturned bottles of cleaning products and spilled makeup that stains the carpet. On a yacht, if the stewardesses have done their job, everything will be safe and comfortable in your home and any decoration that belongs to a table is either packed between pillows or safely secured. Of course, your home isn’t likely to move like a yacht, but applying some of the techniques hostesses use can help declutter and organize your home in no time.

Let’s start with the most visited closet of yacht stewardesses, the cleaning closet. When cleaning the interior rooms of a yacht, stewardesses are responsible for expensive and delicate surfaces. To protect these surfaces from leaking bottles that could damage the finish, they use cleaning carts to store all of their cleaning supplies. A cleaning cart also helps with organization and efficiency.

By having one of every cleaning product for surfaces in your home, along with any rags or dusters, you can just grab it and go. There is no need to make multiple trips to different places in your house where the window cleaner might be. You may not need cotton swabs, toothpicks or toothbrushes to clean like hostesses, but embracing the cleaning cart is a key organizational hack to adopt in 2018.

So you’ve got the cleaning cart, but what about the rarely used bottle of leather conditioner or the extra bottles of toilet bowl cleaner that come in the four pack? Yachts also have everything extras, especially when traveling to remote places. Ideally, keep all of your extra cleaning supplies in one place, organized so you can see what you have by looking, not digging. That way, if it’s not in the designated cleaning area, then there isn’t one in the house and you’ll need to buy it.

Another way yacht managers stay organized is to have a home for everything. There are a couple of reasons for this. One reason is that if any flight attendant or other crew member needs to use the vacuum, she will be able to find it immediately at her designated home. Another reason goes back to the rolling ship on the high seas. It would be hard to relax without knowing that the vacuum cleaner may or may not be safe where it is today, whereas if you have a home, it only takes one trip to know if the sacred vacuum cleaner will be safe for all the trips to come.

Apply this practice with everything possible in your home for easy accessibility. Never rummage through your house for twenty minutes looking for scissors or keys. Have a home for everything and you will never lose anything. This is especially useful for documents, mail, and other papers you may have around the house. A simple filing system of your choice is all you need to free up that counter space that’s drowning in ‘important’ papers you don’t really use, but shouldn’t throw away.

That is why we have talked about the cleaning supplies and other household items that a home has. Let’s go where a lot of people really struggle, the bedroom. Crew cabins on a yacht are very small. And most crew members only have one or two small drawers and a miniature closet for all their personal belongings, including clothes, shoes, makeup, books, electronics, etc.

Of course, since you live in a house, you have a little more space that normally holds a lot more stuff. Most of us have heard of the six-month rule; if you haven’t used it or haven’t used it in six months, throw it away. That’s one way to rid your closet of extra clothes you don’t need, but sometimes that’s not enough.

Living in Northern Michigan, I found that this rule doesn’t really apply to many people who live in areas with hot summers and cold winters. Of course I haven’t used half my wardrobe in six months, because it would be crazy to wear a bikini during a snowy winter.

Another way to organize your closet is to categorize your clothes by type or style and eliminate multiples. If you have eight pairs of jeans, choose your two favorites and donate the other six. A yacht stew lives out of a large backpack or small suitcase. Try to reduce your wardrobe to maybe two suitcases.

You will have fewer clothes, but also less stress when choosing what to wear. Keep the basics and ditch the trendy pieces that will go out of style quickly. Of course, style and clothing are some people’s hobby or identity, so this type of cleanliness won’t resonate with everyone.

Another cleansing technique is to get rid of makeup and bath and body products, or simply not buy more until you’ve used up what you already have. A yacht crew shower is big enough to stand in and that’s it, it’s pretty hard to shave your legs inside one. Having multiple bottles of shampoos, body washes, scrubs, conditioners, and shaving creams is simply not an option.

Using a technique similar to the extra cleaning supplies system can greatly reduce the number of bottles in the shower. Keep one of each staple in the shower, while putting all the extras in a cabinet for future use. And don’t buy more until you need it. This will save you money if you actually use what you have, instead of buying new products all the time and throwing away half-used bottles to make more space.

For makeup, nail polish, and other small items that you have in abundance, get makeup bags. A yacht stewardess may or may not have a first aid kit in her shared bathroom. Being able to grab a small bag with all your makeup for the day is ideal. This will prevent your makeup from getting lost or damaged as well, as it will stay safe in your bag at home.

Some other tips to simplify your home:

-Buy cleaning products that can be used safely on multiple surfaces.

-Buy body products that can be used for more than one part of the body.

Example: I use Dr. Bronner’s soap for my hair, face, body, and shaving.

-If something is broken, fix it or throw it away.

-Go paperless, reduce mail. Most companies offer paperless email notifications.

-Simplify your beauty routine. Find the products that really work and stick with them. Trying new products all the time costs money and adds extra bottles to your shrinking space.